IATA: Emirates Airline in top five airlines ranked by total scheduled passenger kilometres

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has announced industry performance statistics for 2017.

Worldwide annual air passenger numbers exceeded four billion for the first time, supported by a broad-based improvement in global economic conditions and lower average airfares. At the same time, airlines connected a record number of cities worldwide, providing regular services to over 20,000 city pairs* in 2017, more than double the level of 1995. Such increases in direct services improve the industry’s efficiency by cutting costs and saving time for both travelers and shippers alike.

This information is included in the recently released 62nd Edition of the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS), the yearbook of the airline industry’s performance.

“In 2000, the average citizen flew just once every 43 months. In 2017, the figure was once every 22 months. Flying has never been more accessible. And this is liberating people to explore more of our planet for work, leisure and education. Aviation is the business of freedom,” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

Highlights of the 2017 airline industry performance:

Passenger

System-wide, airlines carried 4.1 billion passengers on scheduled services, an increase of 7.3% over 2016, representing an additional 280 million trips by air.

Airlines in the Asia-Pacific region once again carried the largest number of passengers. The regional rankings (based on total passengers carried on scheduled services by airlines registered in that region) are:

The top five domestic passenger airport-pairs were also all in the Asia-Pacific region:
1. Jeju-Seoul Gimpo (13.5 million, up 14.8% over 2016)
2. Melbourne Tullamarine-Sydney (7.8 million, up 0.4% from 2016)
3. Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda (7.6 million, an increase of 6.1% from 2016)
4. Sapporo-Tokyo Haneda (7.4 million, up 4.6% from 2016)
5. Beijing Capital-Shanghai Hongqiao (6.4 million, up 1.9% from 2016)

One of the interesting recent additions to the WATS report is the ranking of passenger traffic by nationality, for international and domestic travel. (Nationality refers to the passenger’s citizenship as opposed to the country of residence.)
1. United States of America (632 million, representing 18.6% of all passengers)
2. People’s Republic of China (555 million or 16.3% of all passengers)
3. India (161.5 million or 4.7% of all passengers)
4. United Kingdom (147 million or 4.3% of all passengers)
5. Germany (114.4 million or 3.4% of all passengers)